Aces and Eights
by tyrsibs
Summary: After the Angel Apocalypse, stories might not seem all that important when faced with surviving day to day. But Bobby knows that some stories still need to be told. What better way to keep someone alive, even after they're gone? This began with the prompt "Let some of the other hunters we've met have the spotlight." First person POV.


Rufus wasn't always a gun. For five years Rufus Turner was the guy who kept warning me off the life and then grumbling about having to train me up so's he wouldn't have to feel guilty when I bit it. Then for some twenty-odd years after that, he was the pain-in-my-ass hunter, semi-retired, who only called when he needed something. Then he wound up getting himself killed after saving my ass. 

If you think that makes me a sentimental old fool, naming this rifle after the jackass, well- 

Maybe you'd be right. 

It was about a year before the big prize-fight that turned the world from a paradise to an ash heap. We didn't believe in angels, not really, back then. But we did believe in demons. Me and Rufus made a bit of a specialty in hunting them down and sending them straight back to hell. I guess in hindsight, maybe we shouldn't have deported quite so many, but we both had history-every hunter has a story, right?

This hunt, though, was part of someone else's quest. Rufus would laugh at me using that word, but that's what it was-Mary Campbell's quest.

I'd been out in the salvage yard pulling some parts for a guy who was going to be trucking through with a rusty old Mustang body in tow that night, so when I walked in the kitchen door, I sure wasn't expecting to smell fresh coffee or to see her standing at the sink window, gazing at the one side of my yard that still had some green left to it. But there she was, and she turned at the sound of the screen door, holding a cup of joe in both hands and smiling her sad smile at me. "Heya, Bobby," she said.

"Back at ya." I fished my flask of holy water out of my jacket pocket and handed it to her. She set her cup down with a grimace, but not a word, as she took the flask and downed a swig. She wiped her mouth with her free hand and handed it back to me. I returned the favor. Can't ever be too careful.

She picked her cup up, grabbed the pot, and gestured with it towards the Formica table in the middle of the room. A clean cup sat there next to a thick sheaf of papers that spilled out of a manila folder.

"He's on the move, Bobby. And he has help." She poured the coffee as she spoke, the slightest tremor shaking her voice. I wasn't sure if she was excited or scared, but I closed my eyes for a moment as she bent over the cup. 

Every hunter has a story-never forget that. Hell, guess we all have stories, now. Mary's, though; hers was a bizarre one, which is saying something in the world of bat-shit crazy we live in. She was raised by the one and only Samuel Campbell, head of one of the few hunting families before the Angel Wars that seemed to thrive on taking out the nasties instead of breaking itself apart. That means she was well-trained, and woulda been even more so if her mom hadn't insisted that she be kept in one school, raised in one of those white-picket neighborhoods, allowed to go to prom- the whole nine yards. All that keeping-up-with-the-Jones's stuff didn't stop a demon from finding her family and killing Samuel, his wife, and the boy Mary was engaged to, all in one night. The bastard left her alive, for some reason, though he's probably regretted it since. Mary became an avenging angel, always on his trail, when she could find it, always beautiful, true-and cold deadly. 

"Yellow Eyes?" I asked, and she scoffed slightly, not bothering to answer. Of course it was him. She sat, waved an inviting hand over the folder, and I joined her at my own table.

"I don't think he's collecting kids anymore. I think he's covering his tracks now, and getting ready for something else."

I sipped my coffee, which was strong and rich. She musta brought it with her. Flipping open the folder, I asked, "What kind of something?"

"Not a clue." Our eyes met briefly, and she smiled again before dropping her look to the folder. "That's why I need your help."

Turned out she'd placed her yellow-eyed demon in several locations over the past six months, some of which he'd been to more than once. She wanted me to check out one of these locations down in Texas. While I was at it, she said, I might be able to look at a case. "I don't know if it's related," she admitted, "but new lore seems to spring up in places he's been." She rummaged in the satchel that sat at her feet and came out with another piece of paper that she handed to me.

"Black-eyed kids? Are you bein' serious, here?" The paper dropped on the table between us, and we sat in silence for a moment, each sipping our coffee, 'til I picked it up with a sigh. 

And, that's how me and Rufus wound up staking out a farmhouse on an empty road in Abilene, Texas. Rufus swore that the waitress he thought he'd been schmoozing-it was more like intimidating from where I sat-had fingered the place as so haunted even the high school kids wouldn't go inside, especially after a guy named Harry Something-or-other had gotten himself practically sliced in two the year before. The usual story, authorities said freak accident involving cellar stairs and old yard equipment. The kids said monsters. Bonus for us? The road it was sitting on was, according to the newly sprung legends, black-eyed kids' prime hunting grounds.

It was about 11:00 pm, and we were in my old Charger, tucked up under some scrubby trees by a roadside ditch. I was staring out the windshield at this ramshackle house that looked like it had been empty so long that even the mice had given it up for a bad bet.

Rufus had his flashlight out and was going over Mary's file, which he was balancing precariously on his lap. "You know, Bobby, I doubt this is a case." He waved his hand in the general direction of the house. "Just a clumsy idiot and a bunch of high school kids scaring themselves silly. Black-eyed kids, it's an internet thing. Not even all that scary, really. Come up on you, ask you for a ride, all you have to say is no-"

I didn't look at him, but he must have seen something on my face by the glow of his light, because he jutted his chin up and said, "Don't give me that look. You're the one who came up with bupkis today. No occupants in over fifty years, no children recorded as dying either on the road or in the house, no signs of demon activity-"

I know I scowled at him then. He grinned at me, teeth flashing in the gloom, and went on, "Didn't even get that cute librarian's phone number, didn't see the way she was making eyes at you-" I ignored that remark and turned back to staring over the wheel at the empty house.

Rufus flicked his light back onto the papers, flipping one over and examining the grainy photo he'd just uncovered. He tapped on the young looking, dark-skinned face of the man in the security cam footage. "That's the guy?"

"Yeah."

"Doesn't look like much. This guy is Yellow Eyes' sidekick?"

"According to Mary."

"According to Mary, right."

That set my haunches up. "She oughta know, don't ya think?"

"Since when do you care what I think when it comes to Miss Mary Campbell?" He raised his hand, palm at me, to shut me up before I could go off. "Don't get your panties in a twist. I'm just saying-"

"You're just sayin' that the woman who's been hunting this demon for most of her whole damn life doesn't know how to put together a case file on him?"

"See what I mean?" Rufus actually chuckled, then asked, "Who is this guy, anyway?"

"Name's Jake Talley. According to the file, he went AWOL from his unit 'bout eight months ago. They were in Iraq at the time."

I could practically hear his eyebrows rise up at that, so I went on, "Two weeks after he was reported missing, he was officially a "person of interest" on that churchyard explosion in Wyoming."

"Uh-huh. The one that tore up the railroad tracks fifteen miles away? And they decided it was some one-in-a-million combination of grave gases and a runaway campfire?"

"The idjits." I nodded at him. "Anyway, that police report caught Mary's attention and she started looking into the kid. After a spell, he shows up again, another church, this time with a dead body in it, and guess who's standing at Jake's elbow?"

I reached over and flipped the photograph for him, showing him the next one down. This was a copy of a nighttime shot, and looked like it had been taken at quite a distance. The silhouettes of two men could be seen standing in front of a church window, its stained glass lit up from inside. I turned it over so he could see the blown-up version on the backside of the paper. "Mary got that from a neighbor of St. Mary's Convent in Maryland, just before it burned down." Rufus hummed, squinting over the two faces. One of them could be Jake. The other was shorter, white, and also older. He looked like a retired cop, or a car salesman. In the dim flicker of light from the window, a yellow flare obscured his only visible eye above a wide toothy grin.

"Looks like a camera glitch. Could be a shifter-" 

"A shifter with yellow eyes? Have you ever seen one of those? Cause I sure haven't."

"Alright-alright-" Rufus looked at the date Mary had penciled in beneath the zoomed-in image, tapping the file thoughtfully. "That was just about the same time-"

"That we were exorcising that demon's ass out of the guy in Kansas. Yep."

"And just before the whole country started lighting up with the news of the wild and the weird." He grunted, shaking the implications off. "Still pretty thin, Bobby."

Something in one of the windows caught the corner of my eye and I sat up straight, and hissed at him to cut his light. "We got movement in the house." 

The two little girls who appeared on the broken front porch wore dresses that gleamed in the moonlight. One stood a head taller than the other, but they were otherwise identical from this distance, with black hair that flowed down over their shoulders and pale skin. They appeared to be holding hands. They didn't so much as look around, just glided off the porch step and walked off down the road. Fortunately, they had their backs to us.

Rufus finally got his flashlight turned off, and shut the folder over the photos, easing it gently down to the floor beneath his feet. We just watched them as they set off down the road. In the distance we saw twin headlights coming in our direction. Not ashamed to say I jumped when Rufus whispered, "Hope that schmuck knows enough to just keep driving."

I nodded, let out my breath.

"OK, big man. What's our play?"

"Oh, so now I'm in charge?"

"Hey, Miss Mary gave this thing to you, not me."

"Well-we check out the house." The girls, just pale slips of moonlight now, dropped out of sight behind a small hill, and it occurred to me to ask, "Ever see ghosts that could tramp that far away from their anchor?"

"Not lately. Which means maybe they aren't ghosts."

"Maybe not. But demons don't tend to stick to one place very long."

"So maybe something is tying them to this road."

"One way to find out. C'mon, old man."

"Old? Old?!" He was really offended by that, which was usually good for a laugh no matter the situation, so I obliged. Rufus was always a little vain. 

We made our way through the tall grass and a ring of debris-beer cans, rusty bits of metal, and plastic bags caught on dying spears of grass-which ended abruptly about ten feet from the shack's kitchen door. The dry grass stopped, too, leaving a patch of hardpan dirt between us and the house.

Rufus shone his light across the barren yard, to the porch corner where we'd seen the girls. "No tracks," he pointed out.

"I can see that. You want up or down?" I regretted offering the choice as soon as I saw his face.

"Give me the salt. I'll lay lines around the upstairs while you check out the basement."

Well, hell—I thought. "Just don't miss any spots," I told him with a little bit of sour taste on my tongue.

"You have to tell me that? That hurts, Bobby, it really does." He glanced up at the sky as I handed over our jug of rock salt. He had to balance his shotgun, cracked open across his forearm, to take it. For his part, he pulled a hunk of iron, a blackjack, out of his jacket pocket and gave it to me. Iron and salt, good for ghosts or little demons-the weight of it made me feel a bit better, though I'd never tell him that. After I stowed his present, I glanced up too, and saw that the stars were slowly being eaten up by dark clouds to the west. "Better get a move on, storm's coming," he said.

I could hear him walking from room to room, muttering to himself, as I took the cellar stairs down into the dark. Some of his footsteps caused dust to shake loose of the beams and sift down onto the dirt floor. I looked around. It was a large bare room, not even an empty shelf for canned goods in a corner, and no marks on this dry dirt, either. The usual cobwebs floated in the opening at the base of the stairs, and I brushed them aside with a curse for my old partner. On the walls, though, my beam picked up splashes of red, here and there. I waved my flashlight around. All four corners of the basement had some kind of finger-painting on them. I headed toward the closest splotch.

Nothing random about those splashes, though finger-painting did seem a good description. The lines I could make out were rough and uneven. In some places they actually split in two or three grooved and parallel markings, as though they had been sketched out with someone's fingertips. The red color was also splotchy and darker in some places, lighter in others. "Blood?" I asked myself. I traced the lines with my beam, starting at the top and sweeping down, and it was all too easy to imagine someone's hand, red and raw, crafting the pattern on the rough stone surface.

I moved around the room, taking a moment with each painting. Some of the patterns looked familiar to me. Sigils, I thought, bringing myself back to the first one by the stairs. They might be summoning, but the ones I almost recognized were more like protection. "What the hell is worth protecting down here?" I wondered out loud.

"Bobby? You talking to yourself?" Rufus called softly down from the top of the stairs.

"No. I'm having a great time talking to the spiders down here." I was still on the move, heading towards the center of the room. "I got something, though-someone set a bunch of summoning sigils on the walls."

"For our little playmates?"

"Probably." The light beam picked up a glint a couple of feet in front of me, and I cocked my head at it. Maybe our little B & E was going to be worth it, after all.

"Well, that's an easy fix, then. I'll get the bleach." He paused, then went on, "There is absolutely nothing up here. No furniture, nothing in the cupboards, not even a loose floorboard." I didn't bother answering him, but I did throw him a snort when he said, "And I used up all the damn salt."

We fell silent as the car finally passed by the house. The driver was hauling ass down the road. I heard his chassis hit the ground way too hard as he crested the little hill.

After he'd gone, Rufus called again. "You want me down there?"

"Nah, keep a look out, huh?"

"Roger that-better be quick, though."

He crossed back over to the front of the house, and I heard him stop somewhere on the road side of the place, probably looking out from along a window jam, or maybe the front door. I could picture him glaring out at the night, practically daring the black-eyed girls, if that's what they were, to return.

I'd made it to the source of the glint, and brushed at it with the toe of my boot, uncovering more shiny stuff. So I kept going, running the boot tip along a curved edge of some kind of metal. Maybe it was silver, though I never got to look at it in full light. I walked all the way around it, uncovering a circle about five feet across, dead center in the room.

Outside, the wind abruptly picked up, and my shoulders jerked almost to my ears when something solid hit the side of the house. I could hear the oncoming storm rattling the glass window panes upstairs. I kept at this circle, though, eventually crouching down to brush more of the dirt and dust off of it, sweeping my light back and forth to see if there were more metal lines across the middle. There weren't.

But in the center of the thing was something else. Half buried in the dirt, and covered like the circle had been, I picked out a raised rectangular shape. "Hey, Rufus?" I called, but the wind howled in response. I did hear him moving again, his footsteps moving further away, towards the west end windows. "Rufus! Got something else here!" I called, but got no response. I thought about heading upstairs, but in the end I stepped into the circle instead.

Pretty soon I could tell it was a box. I felt along the edges of its lid as I swept the dirt of ages off it, finding what seemed to be inscriptions on either side of the lip. It was half buried in the floor, like the circle that protected it, but I figured I could lift it out of there without too much trouble. I dug around it with my fingers and soon enough had the bottom edge in view. The whole thing was maybe fourteen inches long, eight inches wide, and about three inches thick.

That was when the storm came in at last, but it arrived in a gentle little gust of a breeze that raised the hair on the back of my neck. I turned, looking for the source, shining my light back and forth in a broad sweep from corner to corner, then up along the floor joists above me. I caught a squeaky rattle coming from the top of the cellar wall, and pulled my beam back to find what caused it. Another rattle settled my curiosity, and I saw a little metal door set up there and squeaking back and forth, pushed about by the wind. A coal chute. A goddamn coal chute between me and the outside, and me without any salt.

Right on cue, a giggle rose out of the dark behind me, and I spun around again, the beam slicing across nothing. I might have called out. A little.

The laughter rang out from behind me again, and then I heard a whisper to my left, childish and comically plaintive. "We're hungry-"

From my other side, another voice chimed in agreement, "No supper tonight."

"No supper for so-o-o long."

The whispers circled, always just out of reach of the light.

"Everyone's scared of us-won't come home-"

"To play-"

For some damn reason, I still had a hand on that box, and I found its edge again, and yanked it free of its hole. It shed its layer of grime as I pulled it up and I could feel smooth wood under my fingers.

"That's not yours," a little girl's voice whispered in my ear and I spun again. One of them stood in front of me, her toes not quite touching the circle. Her dress was spotless, her smile vacant as she said, sweetly, "Put it back."

"Sorry, kid," I told her. I tucked the box into the broad game pocket at the back of the zip-up hunting vest I was wearing underneath my jacket and stood up.

She flickered out, but was back before I could even take a step towards the stairs, blocking my way. In the flashlight beam, her eyes were black hollows. She raised her hand, palm out, up beside her empty eyes, and her fingers lengthened with a crack. Her fingernails gleamed in the light. "Put. It. Back."

Behind me I heard the other, smaller of the two, say softly, "It belongs to Daddy. Put it back."

"Or what?" I'd like to say my voice didn't quiver as I raised it to call to my partner, but I'd be lying. The girls didn't move, but Rufus finally stirred himself. His tramping steps shook the joists as he crossed the kitchen floor above us. The girl in front of me looked up at the dust sifting onto our heads, and I took advantage of the lull to reach into my pocket for the iron black jack I'd tucked there.

"Bobby? You got company?"

"No shit-"

The girl, distracted, moved toward the stairs, and I hit her as she passed, giving her everything I had. She flickered out.

But I'd stepped over the silver circle to do it, and her little sister slashed at my leg. I yelled then, and swung wide with my weapon as Rufus called to me. "Hit the dirt, Bobby-"

I was not fond of taking orders from Rufus, but I took that one. His gun, loaded with iron shot, sprayed into the little demon, and she disappeared, too. He followed up with as fast a charge down those steps as his old knees could manage. Gotta say, I wasn't sorry to see him but I grumbled anyway.

"What took you so long?"

"Yeah, yeah. I won't even make you say you owe me one." He loomed over me, shining his flashlight into my eyes and then dropping it down to inspect my leg. "Damn it. That looks deep."

"Ya think? Got a handkerchief or something?"

Between the two of us we managed to get a quick bandage on the wound so I wouldn't leave too much of myself down there. He even helped me to my feet. By the time I was upright again, though, the black-eyed girls were back. We heard them rustling and giggling through their hands at us. I adjusted the cudgel in my hand, and Rufus nodded at me. He flipped the release on his shotgun and discharged his used shells, then reached into his pocket for fresh ones. We began sidling toward the stairs as he reloaded.

"Give it back!" One of them screeched, rushing out of the dark and pawing at me with her sharp nails. Rufus wheeled and shot, but went wide, pulverizing a piece of the wall. Still, her empty eyes went wide and she flickered.

We took another step, and the other was between us and the stairs. I swept her away with my blackjack. The first one baited Rufus on the other side as we inched closer to the exit, and I heard the shower of rock chips as his shot pellets hit the wall again. He had to reload.

She was back in front of me as Rufus worked the gun, laughing and swiping at me, practically licking her lips, and I knew we were going to have to fight every step up at this rate. Outside the wind howled, and in here more dust shook down from the floorboards-

And something clicked in my head. The eyes, the claws, the summoning-Acheri-of course. I coulda slapped my head with my own cudgel. "Acheri-they're Acheri demons, Rufus-"

"Don't really care too much for definitions right now." He had the shotgun loaded and he slammed it shut and raised it in a smooth motion.

"The sigils-that's what's holding them here. Break the sigils on the walls."

"The what?"

I swiped at the girl in front of me and she flickered off like she was skipping away. "Look for the red lines on the walls-they're summoning sigils, you dumbass-"

"Why didn't you say that before?"

Rufus shot again, and the girls screamed this time. We kept moving, he kept firing, and they kept slashing at us, but they seemed to grow weaker with each step. 

Won't say they never hit home, though. 

Anyway, we finally hit the stairs and started backing up them, as close to shoulder to shoulder as we could manage. The girls stopped chasing us after we'd gained about four steps. Their eyes were no longer black hollows, and they clasped pudgy childish hands in front of their white pristine dresses.

"He'll be angry with us," the smaller one wailed.

"It won't help you." 

"Too late-too late-"

"Daddy's walking with the big man, now-" 

There was more like that, but you get the picture. I told them they were free, that the binding was broken, but they held their hands out to us as if begging us to stay, even as they faded into the gloom. We kept climbing, and by the time we made the top, they were gone. 

Rufus wrenched open the back door of the house and we stumbled out onto the little stoop. The wind tore into us now, but we kept going, until a hefty gust knocked me sideways and my bad leg went out from under me as I tried to brace myself. I felt the box slide out from the game pocket as I went down. It tumbled out from under the hem of my jacket and onto the packed dirt, landing on a corner and knocking the lid askew.

Rufus was grumbling at me, "Oh no, you don't. You're not stopping here, Bobby. I'm gonna walk you all the way to Kansas if I have to, and we are gonna give Miss Mary a piece of our minds for sending us on this little trip."

He was bending over me, but he stopped short of offering me his hand again, staring instead down at the box which lay between us, dead center in his flashlight beam. I looked, too, and for a moment the storm seemed to calm around us. "What the hell is that?" he asked.

Nestled inside the box I saw a row of bullets, each one in its own little holder. I pushed the lid aside to see more, and we both drew sharp breaths then, forgetting all about the house, the storm, and the girls for a split second.

It was a gun. A beautiful, old-fashioned, long-barreled revolver, carved and inscribed. I brushed a thumb along its barrel, feeling the words that decorated the cold iron. I peered at them in the beam. "Non timebo-"

"Is that what I think it is?" Rufus asked.

I didn't know. Even now I don't know for sure what he thought it was. Because- 

A soft disembodied voice was in front of me, a breath mingling in the wind that whipped around us. 

"We love our Daddy," it said. "You can't stop him and the big man." 

"Give it back." 

She appeared at his side, claws bared, hollow black eyes fixed on me. He started raising the shotgun as he looked up. And she laughed as she swiped those claws across his throat.

Startled-eyes wide as deep crimson stains grew in the claws' wake-Rufus dropped the flashlight and his shotgun, reaching one hand to his neck. 

And the other hand out to me. 

The revolver came easy from its resting place-hell, my hand was already there. Cupping one hand over the bullet-filled slots, I flipped the box over using the barrel of the revolver. I felt a couple rounds fall into my hand as I glanced down to find the cylinder and barrel release. Don't ask me how I found it through the blur of tears that stung my eyes in that moment. Can't even tell ya how I got the damn thing loaded, but the next thing I knew, I was on my ass, revolver leveled at a gloating ghoulish grin.

From behind me, too close, I heard, "Put. It. Back."

Next to me, a gurgling sigh as Rufus hit the ground.

"Not on your life, princess!" And I pulled the trigger- 

The little one was calling for their Daddy- 

I flopped to my back as searing pain erupted across my left shoulder, and I fired once more-a final scream cut short. They left nothing behind but black soot that swirled up and away into the storm. 

Afterwards, I cleaned up, and I brought him home with me. 

I tried to do right by Rufus. He never wanted a hunter's funeral, so I took care of him the old fashioned way. The grave is here in the Meadow Hills Cemetery, if you care to visit. Had to pull in a favor or two, but the town pastor actually always liked me, for some damn reason, and he even helped me pay for an honest to god headstone after a while. The stone does not say "Grumpy Old Jackass." It just gives his name and death date, since he never told me his birthday. If you go see him, be sure to take a bottle of whiskey and down a shot for him. And then one for me, too. He was partial to Johnny Walker Blue, if you can scrounge up some of the good stuff.

The gun I gave to Mary, and what she did with it ain't my story to tell. I wasn't with her when it happened, but I hear she got her revenge, though she didn't get much more than a couple of hours to savor it before we were gathering for her wake, too. The gun, bullets, and box all disappeared after that, and then- 

Well, you know how hairy it's been these last years. 

So, now I have this old rifle, and it'll kill just about any son of a bitch out there. It's just as heavy, cantankerous, loud-and reliable-as the guy I named it for. 

This here's Rufus. But he wasn't always a gun.


End file.
